Eat Well; Travel Often: Day 6

Day 6: 5/23/15 (Wisconsin to Deer River, MN)

395 miles

Today started pretty early. Jillian woke up at the rest stop at 3:45am and started on the road towards Minnesota. The sunrise drive through North Country was beautiful. We switched a few times before we made it the Christensen Oasis. We arrived around 10:30am and were almost instantly offered mimosas and bloody marys – felt just like any Saturday morning at a Knight residence. After unloading our disheveled car, we got a tour of the gorgeous lakefront property. We recommend that everyone visit the state of 10.000 lakes, specifically Aunt Janet and Uncle Marty. After checking out the gardens and walking down to the dock, we ate lunch on the deck to soak up some sun. Our next adventure was truly a treat. We were taken out to a secret spot in the neighborhood to forage for morel mushrooms. These mushrooms are somewhat of a big deal if you don’t know much about them. In the stores they’ll sell for a pretty penny. Janet and Marty pointed out the first few they spotted to help us train our eyes since they grow a bit sporadically and not in clusters. Rico was pretty successful in finding them on his own. It took Jillian a little longer before she was finding some without any guidance, but she got there. We came home with 60+ mushrooms to sauté for an appetizer sometime during our stay.

After getting home Jillian and Marty ended up falling asleep for an afternoon nap and Rico and Janet hung out at the end of the dock chitchatting. Once everyone was bright eyed and bushy tailed again, Janet prepared some hors d’oeuvres for a boat ride and we went off on the lake. We buzzed around before stopping on the other side to enjoy some caprese bites, cashews, and cheese and crackers, yum! Although it seemed like we never stopped eating, we started thinking about dinner when we came in off the boat.

While dinner was cooking we rigged up the GoPro to try and capture some footage of the hummingbirds that shoot on and off the deck. It was quite entertaining to watch the 2 or 3 of them zip around and fight for the nectar feeder. Our meal consisted of some delicious fish and chips with coleslaw. The fish was the highly sought out Minnesota Walleye so we were super appreciative to be treated with some native foods. Janet had also whipped up a nice strawberry rhubarb pie with rhubarb from her garden – sorry Dad (John), Janet’s was better.

Once Janet and Marty turned in for bed, we headed out to the dock to try our hand at some night photography. Besides Jillian freaking out that creatures of the night were going to come and eat us, it was a fun first time taking some night pictures.